


take me to that hidden place.

by storyskein



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cheating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 01:23:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14631156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyskein/pseuds/storyskein
Summary: time stamp 5.3. clarke and bellamy are being held in a cabin.





	take me to that hidden place.

**Author's Note:**

> READ THE TAGS. 
> 
> this is not everyone's jam. that's great. if it's not yours, scrolllll on by.
> 
>  
> 
> THANKS: to my lovely betas ms.scarlet & verbaepulchellae <3

_Take me to that hidden place_

_Promise me the glass will break_

_Fragility is a gift that we don't see_

_Brought to life by the storms that wreck the sea_

“You’ll stay in there until we confirm your story is true.” Diyoza’s voice is steel with hot edges as she gives a nod to Zeke to show them to one of the cabins that surround the inner courtyard of the small village. Before Diyoza unlocks her gaze from him, she says softly, “I’m not sure what’s better for you. For it to be true or not.” 

Clarke is kneeling upright on the ground, having pushed herself to her knees but not quite able to make it to standing. Her rigid body sways with the effort to stay up, and sweat is beading at her temples. Bellamy belatedly realizes the growing, wet black splotch on her shirt is her _blood_ , fuck. She’s not going to last much longer without some help. 

“A med kit too,” Bellamy snaps out his order to Diyoza’s back. “And some water. Food if you have it would be nice.”

McCreary is in his face in an instant. “You’re pushing your luck, motherfucker.” Rage is plain on McCreary’s sullen, angular face--and Bellamy’s lived long enough to know that this is the not just the rage of someone threatened, but the distilled, pure, seething anger of a sadist denied his toy. 

A pulse of anger floods his veins, the impulse to get right back into McCreary’s face. Fuck, he wishes he could just kill this asshole, he’s going to be a problem. But his eyes flick to Diyoza, now observing him, half her face in shadow, the other half almost translucently pale in the firelight. 

McCreary, he knows, is not the real threat. Diyoza is the one with cold, pragmatic rationale, the one he needs to impress. It’s all a game now. 

Bellamy trains his eyes on Diyoza as he talks, as much to piss off McCreary as to deliver the last part of his message. “My people are waiting in the woods, right now, with orders to pull the plug on _your_ people by first light. If Clarke doesn’t make it--,” The truth of the thought rocked him in that moment, that he could lose her, find her, _lose her again_ “--then well, your people won’t either.” 

Bellamy brought his gaze back into McCreary’s beady, rat eyes. “So. Med kit. Water. Food.” 

McCreary snarls but backs down, slinks away to Diyoza’s side. 

“Fine,” Diyoza clips the word. “Zeke will see to it.” She jerks her head and a group of the hulking prisoners follow her into the church, the others melt into tents in the woods. Silence falls like a hammer on the empty, quiet courtyard. 

Clarke sways once and falls into the dirt. 

*

Clarke’s eyes open slowly, she blinks once, twice. She’s floating, disembodied, too many things happened and her brain is still trying to synthesize the _pain pain humiliation laughter pain pain rover! no! shock Bellamy shock_ into coherent thoughts. 

She tries to swallow away the cottonmouth and whimpers, a sound she didn’t even know she could make until an hour ago. She’s alone again, she knows it, tears leaking out the sides of her eyes as she twists on the...bed?... The figment of Bellamy disintegrates in the face of the flames licking around her neck. 

“Hey,” a voice whispers to her, and in an animal instinct, her spine relaxes. It’s that voice, it’s _Bellamy_. “Clarke. You have to lie still.” 

Clarke wills her eyes to open, afraid he’s not real, that she’s hallucinating because of the blood loss and pain. 

_Don’t be a coward, Clarke_. 

“Bellamy,” Clarke breathes as his image forms again, not the half-in the past-half-now confused visions of her shock-trauma, but what must be him, now. 

He starts towards her, then a knock on the door startles them and he steps back, a little unsure, like he just can’t get his bearing. 

Zeke wastes no time barging in. “Med kit,” he says, holding up the small duffel. He shoves another bag on the table. “Food and water.” 

Bellamy nods. “Tell Diyoza I mean it. First light.” 

Zeke divides a look between both of them, considering whether or not to speak. “Look. I don’t know her story, your story, nothing. But whatever upper hand you think you have, be careful. McCreary is an idiot, but Diyoza…” He trails off, looks over at Clarke again. “Diyoza is smart.” 

“So your advice is?”

Zeke laughs at that. “Well, you already started off on the wrong foot. But if it were me? Diyoza values honesty. _Offer_ to tell her what really happened. She’s not unreasonable, and we’re all curious. It’s valuable information to have. Make a deal.” 

Clarke lays silently, pushing away the burn to gather as much information as she could now that she was up close to them. Zeke moves like someone with military bearing, but had an openness as he spoke--telling the truth, she thinks. Bellamy responds to threat differently now--careful, considering. Where once his body radiated whatever emotion simmered beneath, now she could barely get a read on him. A drop of sorrow burns in her chest, and she blinks, this time willingly turning her gaze to the faded painted mural on the wall. She and Madi hadn’t had time to restore it, yet, she thinks, desperately trying to distract herself. It was their plan for the next winter. 

“We’ll keep it in mind,” Bellamy says, obviously with a subtext of _now get the fuck out of here_. Zeke passes another curious glance at them, nods, and leaves, closing the door gently behind him. 

Bellamy combs through the bag, pulling out pain medicine, antibiotics, alcohol swabs, rags. He puts it on a low table so she doesn’t have to lift too much to see what it is. 

“What first?” he asks, voice almost curt. 

She points to the pain medicine patches. “Those.” 

Moments after the patch is applied, a wave of gentle numbing sensation washes over Clarke. Her eyelids flutter with relief. Everything still hurts, but not as much.

“Next?” Voice still just as gruff. 

The gruff tone, almost unfeeling, confuses her. Clarke looks up to search his face, to seek out any detail that will tell her what’s going on with him. His eyes are masked but his jaw flickers once, twice. So there’s emotion there, but something else, too. Not knowing what it is opens the door to the past, and it’s not time for that, yet. 

Clarke closes her eyes. _You’re being silly. It might have been six years, but it’s Bellamy._

“Hey,” she whispers, keeps her voice curious and hopefully, inviting. Her heart starts pounding, a bit afraid of any reaction she might get. “What’s going on?” 

“Nothing,” he answers too quickly, too defensively. “I’m fine.” 

Well, she’s fucking not. 

Biting back an almost overwhelming sting of disappointment, Clarke steels her voice, clips out, “Hand me a wet cloth.” 

Bellamy does. She’s careful not to brush their fingers together, which makes it even more awkward. Tears prick the back of her eyelids with a mixture of sadness and confusion and frustration. Her flesh is raw and painful despite the medicine, and she’s clumsy. 

“Here.” Bellamy takes the cloth from her, no more than ten seconds after he handed it to her. “Lay back, let me do it.” 

Bellamy pulls up a stool next to the bed. Clarke lies back, now adding _vulnerable_ and _whiplash_ to the unsure-clumsy-awkward mix, and of all things she starts to blush as he presses the cool rag against her skin. 

A moment later, he slides a hand on the side of her jaw, using this thumb to tip her chin up. Bellamy clears his throat, almost as if he’s startled at himself for doing it with asking. “I just...needed…”

Clarke nods. He doesn’t need to continue; she doesn’t need to know. It’s all she can do not to lean into it, but whatever is happening feels precarious and she doesn’t want to go too far. “It’s fine.” 

Bellamy lightly touches the cloth to her skin and presses for a moment too long. Clarke shifts her gaze from the ceiling to him, watching as he stares at his own hands on her skin. 

“I--” Bellamy looks up at her, eyes wide. “I thought--”

The cloth falls away. 

“I know.” Relief, even more acute than earlier somehow, crashes over her. Wherever he went in those last few minutes, he was back. “I should have been dead.” 

Bellamy nods once, twice. “I thought you were---Clarke,” he says desperately, “I wouldn’t have left if--”

“You were out of time.” Clarke’s working against her own tears now. She has her own grief, her own anger, but it’s buried somewhere deeper. And he needs the absolution she can give him, that she wants to give him. “You had to leave.” She smiles, faint, wanting desperately to protect him from the grief she knew was coming because she had felt it, too. And what were they if not two sides of the same coin, even now. “It was your only choice.” 

A smile flickers, the ghost of a conversation so long ago. Then Bellamy shakes his head once, then something in him cracks. Grief rolls off him in waves, and he lets it take him. His head sinks next to her side as he kneels over her cot, shoulders shaking, their hands curled together. 

*

Clarke has scars. So many scars. Old radiation burns twisted like melted plastic, silvery-gray slashes across her torso (“Fell off a cliff,” she says shortly, “Lesson learned: watch where you’re going.”), smaller ones from training with Madi. She tells him stories while he stitches the larger cuts she got from falling on the rocks after the sonic blast, as much to keep his hands steady and distract herself. It works, mostly, until he doesn’t push through the skin hard enough and the needle gets caught. 

Clarke gasps and Bellamy mutters, “ _Nomonjoka,”_ as he pushes the needle through, the last stitch. 

“Who taught you Trig?” Clarke asks a moment later, voice deliberately even. 

Bellamy’s heart stutters. “Echo,” he says, and he feels Echo’s name land heavily between them. 

Clarke says a soft, “Oh,” while searching his eyes. She’s waiting for a correction, a _no it’s not like that_. The fact that Clarke is waiting for that correction sends a hot swoop through his belly. Suddenly he doesn’t know how to explain he and Echo, either. Dating? Partners? They had been together on the Ark, and that was fine. There had never been any talk of the future because getting to the ground _was_ the future. He never had to explain it to anyone, it just was.

“We’re together,” Bellamy says finally, and calibrates the tone wrong, it’s too gentle, because as soon as he says it, she’s embarrassed. Her pain-pale cheeks flush, her eyes glisten, then she blinks and they’re dry again. It brings up so much regret, so much old hurt, that she’s upset by him and Echo. Clarke wanting him, him saying something, anything, had been almost everything he’d wanted from before, had been a million scenarios he’d tortured himself with for the first year. 

“Any soreness?” Bellamy returns to the brusque tone as he presses one last time over her belly. He’s suddenly uncomfortably aware that this is probably the most he has ever touched her. 

How he wants to keep touching her. 

“No,” Clarke replies, voice guarded, almost flat. “No soreness. I’ll heal.” 

The cabin is lit only by two soft-glow amber solar lamps, and when she lays all the way back down, pushing aside the pillows she used to prop herself up to guide his stitching, her face is lost to the shadows. 

“I think I’m going to sleep,” she says. “I’m pretty tired.” 

“Good idea.” Before he can stop himself--he doesn’t want to stop himself--he reaches out and brushes her hair off her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. Her blue eyes are pools of ink in the darkness, and she’s just watching him in this way she has now. Still. Careful. 

Patient. 

*

Clarke doesn’t mind tears anymore. She used to be ashamed of such an external sign of frailty, especially on an Earth that spared no cruelty to those that were weak. She’d cry, sure, like when Finn died, when Lexa died, when she left Bellamy at the gates of the then Camp Jaha. But she had always hated it. 

Now? It’s dark and quiet and she knows that they are both pretending to be asleep because they don’t know what else to do. Tears leak from the corner of her eyes, tears of frustration and fucked up expectations. 

For the first time Clarke feels the immense weight of the six years that she had been pushing back, and back, and back. Everything is different. And she has Madi, whom she loves with a ferocity that scares her. But now there’s a longing for the what could of been of the Ark, years and years lost with her friends. 

With Bellamy. 

Clarke digs her nails into her palms, trying to hold back the rage, the grief, that old bitterness she hadn’t felt since those months in the forest after she left Arkadia. But a sound lets loose anyway, somewhere between a choke and a sob. 

Bellamy’s voice floats over from the nearby couch where he’s resting. “You okay?” he asks. “Need more meds?” 

She almost brushes it off with an _I’m fine_. But she’s been in enough situations to know that whenever Diyoza decides to interrupt them, it’s over. It’s more war. More life or death. And besides, it’s been six years, and she wants to fight. Fight with someone she knows, someone she loves, scream at them her loneliness and despair, just to speak and be _heard_. Things she has never said, not since the moments when she put that gun to her temple and heard the bird cry out. 

“I don’t need meds,” Clarke snaps. 

Bellamy, after a moment, “Do you want to talk?” 

“I’m so fucking _angry,_ Bellamy. Angry at all of it,” Clarke spits out before she can stop herself. She turns to face him, and she can see him now that her eyes are adjusted to the dark. He blanches, like her anger is for him. Maybe some of it is. “I spent six years _waiting_ and _hoping_ for you to come back. For my mother to find a way out of the bunker. To not be so alone,” her voice breaks and she can feel the hot tears falling faster now. “And this!” Clarke waves a hand to the outside, jerks to much and recoils from the pain. “Fuck. Fuck! This is what _I_ get, what _we_ get after everything, Bellamy. All of that loss. All of that pain. For fucking _what_.” 

“Hey,” his voice is that low husk she loves, she missed, that something in her always keens towards. He rolls off the couch and sits on the edge of her bed, and the ease with which he takes her hand this time, without the hesitancy of earlier, reminds her of the Echo of it all. 

And the disappointment then isn’t about war or Shallow Valley or the bunker, it’s personal.

Clarke doesn’t move her hand, though she feels she should. Truth is, she needs the touch, the simple warmth of skin on her skin. 

And he doesn’t move it. Instead, his thumb moves back and forth slowly along hers.

“You’re not alone anymore, Clarke.” 

“I’m not?” She knows it’s punishing and mean, knows she’s provoking him. Wants to see if she can. 

Bellamy’s thumb stills, but he leaves his hand joined with hers. He pauses for a long while. Long enough to make her regret turning sadness into anger, frustrated that she just can’t say what she wants to say. That there feels like there are boundaries between them that were never there before, boundaries that feel like they shouldn’t apply because they’re _them_.

“I meant what I said to Diyoza,” he says finally. “I would kill those prisoners for you. Even after six years. In an instant.” 

“Why?” She sits up even though her muscles protest. “After six years. _Why_.” 

Bellamy deflects, goading her just the same. “Why did you make this place for everyone?”

Fuck it. 

“I kept the village up for everyone,” Clarke agrees, because that is the truth. The community was for them, all the people she had loved and had to hope, believe, were coming back to her one day. But. “The library adjacent to the chapel? It was falling apart. That? That I rebuilt, and filled with any books Madi and I found. That was--is, when we get it back--for you.” 

Bellamy’s breath hitches. 

“I’m not stupid. I know that you’re with Echo. I’m not asking for anything. Just. I--” 

_What? What Clarke? Love a boy that left six years ago that is with someone else. You have no right._

Then Bellamy kisses her, before she can think of anything else to say. 

*

Clarke kisses him back, ferocious, shoving herself into his arms. He catches her whimpers of pain in his mouth, but doesn’t stop. She doesn’t either. 

Bellamy twists around so he’s seated on the bed, dragging her with him until she slots her knees next to his thighs, straddling him. Clarke’s fingers twist in his hair and he grunts, retaliates by biting her lip and tugging until she gasps. It occurs to him that she hasn’t been touched, not like this, in over six years, and that makes him even hungrier for her. 

They don’t speak, don’t give themselves time to speak, time to think. Clarke shoves his jacket off; he pulls up her tank top, revealing her battered midsection. She’s burned and bruised, salt tear tracks on her cheeks, six years older, and late night moonbeams give her a pearly halo. In that pause she’s a form he doesn’t recognize, a ghost he talked to, a story he kept for himself, hardly even mentioning her until the last day when the ground was a possibility again. 

Then it’s skin on skin, and Clarke can’t get enough of it. She’s everywhere at once, as much contact as she can have with his body. Skimming her palms up his spine, mouthing from his collarbone, up his neck, until she nips behind his ear.

Bellamy lets her. He grips his fingers into her hips, holds her steady while she explores, occasionally dipping his to suck on her tits, bring his hand up to pinch her nipples until she squirms. He can feel the heat of her on his thighs, slides his fingers into her cunt. 

She moans a long _fuck_ when his fingers deeper into her, draw her slick out. Her hips start to rock as his fingers find her clit, begin circling slow and lazy. 

“Faster,” she whispers, dropping her mouth to his. “Harder, fuck.” 

Bellamy keeps up the pace and adding pressure, fingers working in tandem with the roll of her hips. 

But she’s tiring and he can tell, and just as he’s about to change positions, Clarke whispers, “Fuck me?” 

“Yes.” Bellamy bites the curve of her neck/shoulder, hard enough that she shivers. “Lay down.” 

She crawls off him, and he slides behind her, drawing her top leg up and back so it rests on her hip. Clarke already has her fingers on her clit, picking up where he left off. 

He moves to slide in one finger, to start prepping her, and she shakes her head. 

“No.” She turns her head to look at him. “Just fuck me.” 

“You sure?”

Clarke smiles at him then, buts her forehead against his chin. “Just fuck me, Bellamy,” she half-sighs, half-pleads, and fuck. He’s gone. 

Bellamy slides his dick along her cunt enough to wet himself, enough to make her arch against him when he bumps her clit. 

Then he cups her knee with his palm, opens her up for a better angle. Begins pressing his cock into her cunt. 

They rock back and forth, her cunt so tight, so fucking hot and wet. Clarke is rolling her hips back against him without stopping, desperate. When he finally bottoms out, he holds her still. 

“Fuck, Bellamy, fuck, you feel so good,” Clarke whisper-chants. “I want to move.” 

“I know you do,” he whispers back to her. _But_ is the unsaid between them. _But_ this might be the one and only. _But_ this might be all they ever have. _Remember_ it. Between the two of them they know the value of memory, and whatever else happens after tonight, Bellamy wants to remember this. 

When he finally releases her, Clarke twines her hands back to hold him closer. He wants to squeeze her neck, pull her as tight to him as possible, but settles for a palm over her mouth to muffle her cries. She bites him, and he likes the sting. 

Soon, though, this position isn’t enough. Not close enough, not skin enough. Bellamy pulls Clarke up, back onto his lap, back where he can see her tits bounce, watch the roll of her hips, where he can bruise her ass with his fingers and feel her teeth on his neck.

Bellamy grabs her ass and sets a punishing pace, fucking his cock into her as she slams down. She’s winded, but anytime he even starts to ask, she covers his mouth with hers, kissing him deeply. 

Her hips start moving in tight, tight circles around his cock, walls gripping and fluttering. “I’m going to come,” she muffles the cry in his neck as she begins to shake and shiver. Bellamy comes as she does, fucking into her as deep as he can. 

*

It takes them a while to come down, panting and sweaty, trading lingering, soft kisses. 

But then they hear the camp start so stir, and sure enough, the night is fading into gray. The rustle of clothes punctuates their silence, Clarke digging back into the medical bag, both of them eating a quick breakfast. 

They sit quietly on the bed, waiting for Diyoza. 

“She’ll come right before first light,” Bellamy says, by way of filling the silence. 

“Seems right.” Clarke turns to him. “Your plan? Is it good?”

Bellamy’s lips curve into an almost-smile. “Probably one of the better ones we’ve had.” 

“I believe you.” Clarke sighs, feeling like it’s almost a deathwatch waiting for that door to open. When that door opens, _this_ is over. 

“Clarke--” Bellamy starts. 

“I know. I won’t say anything,” she says. 

He nods. “I just don’t know--”

“Bellamy.” Clarke squeezes his thigh. “I said I wasn’t asking for anything. I meant it.” 

He looks down at their hands. “I meant everything I said, too.”

“I know you did. I did, too. Maybe when this is over you can visit that library, see it for yourself.” She kisses his cheek, wills those words to impart to him the promise they always seem to make to each other of _maybe after if_. 

This doesn’t placate him, but right when he opens his mouth to speak the door slams open. 

“On your feet,” Charmaine belts out, blinding them with flashlights in the eyes. McCreary and Zeke lower the lights and Charmaine is already walking back to the church when she yells out, “Come on. Let’s make a fucking deal.” 

They look at each other for a beat, then two. 

“Time to go,” Clarke murmurs, resisting the urge for one last--something. She doesn’t even know what. _This_ was never meant to be anything other than this moment.

Bellamy helps her up, and together, they walk out of the cabin.

**Author's Note:**

> A NOTE: 
> 
> please do not use the comment section here to talk to me about how much echo sucks (i like echo!), how you hate becho (i'm a multishipper, have becho & clarke x bellamy x echo comin' atcha!), or how much you hate cheating (hey guess what, i hate it too, but this is fanfic, so.). 
> 
> anyway, tl;dr anything that's crappy/abusive/whatever will be deleted.
> 
> TITLE NOTE: 
> 
> title (and lyrics) from 'porcelain' by tow'rs.


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